Bornova Municipality City Hall: Climatic Analyses

Location Izmir, Turkey
Year 2015
Client Ozan Onder Ozener, Deniz Aslan
Job description Climatic analyses
Function Public building
Status National two-stage competition, 2nd place
See more arkitera.com

Bornova, an Izmir district, has a hot and humid climate. The challenge for this project was to deal with the climatic constraints in an office building with high internal heat gains in addition to high solar gains; since the architects requested a glass façade throughout the mass. Furthermore, the project area constituted another problem, that the buildable area was at the north edge of the whole site, leaving the south part for the requested urban square, eliminating the potential for providing shaded areas in the square, using the building itself.

In order to deal with mentioned issues, the building was designed to have an atrium that separates the thin south portion while the offices can be placed in the larger mass, without a direct south facing façade. This south portion is used for public functions, and serve as a vertical continuation of the square. This allows for a free-running volume, and limit the conditioning to only the office areas.

There is a water body on the ground floor, reaching to the building entrance, connected to the atrium. This allows for evaporative cooling inside the building. The positioning of the pool was made through CFD analyses, to ensure that while the wind was effectively carrying the evaporation towards the atrium in summer, the area was not affected by the wind in winter.

Sunpath diagrams showing the difficult orientation of the square: The buildable area is the north portion of the project site, leaving the south for public square and cancelling the potential of creating a self-shaded open area.

Massing strategy to deal with south facing functions and square. An atrium separates the thin south portion while the offices can be placed in the larger mass, without a direct south facing façade. This south portion is used for public functions, and serve as a continuation of the square. This allows for a free-running volume, and limit the conditioning to only the office areas.

Final simulations to control the proposed strategies: Natural daylight levels in office areas and CFD simulations for summer and winter scenarios to test the placement of pool reaching inside the building’s atrium.

3D images.